Do the Cowboys have enough leadership from Romo and Phillips?

IRVING – A lack of leadership from coach Wade Phillips and quarterback Tony Romo is preventing the Dallas Cowboys from ranking among the league’s elite teams, Emmitt Smith suggested Tuesday in a radio interview.

Speaking with SIRIUS NFL Radio’s Adam Schein and Rich Gannon, Smith said the team doesn’t have enough “discipline” and “focus” to become a Super Bowl contender

Citing Tom Coughlin and Bill Belichick as examples, Smith said Super Bowl-winning coaches “instill discipline from day one. They don’t come in trying to make friends. Matter of fact, they created a bunch of enemies and them made the enemies get on their terms and then they moved forward. And that’s one thing that I believe that the Dallas Cowboys can use.”

Turning to Romo, Smith, the NFL’s all-time leading rusher and three-time Super Bowl champion with the Cowboys, said championship quarterbacks must “Demand excellence…I never saw (Romo) go snatch somebody up and say, ‘Hey, we can’t win like this. We can’t have guys jumping offsides. I can’t have (a defender) coming at me unabated. Who is make the mistakes up front? Why aren’t you picking this guy up? This is not going down this way. If you can’t get your job done, get off the football field.

“…that is missing at that position, which boils back down to one word – leadership.”

Romo vowed during the offseason to be a more “active leader” this season, but Smith expressed doubts that such a transformation can happen.

“So when you have your offseason and you say things are going to change and you’ve never been that dominant personality or in that leadership position then, as a player, you lose me,” Smith said. “You lost me. I’m sitting there saying, ‘OK, now you’re going to become a leader?’ What happened (in previous playoff seasons) when we got knocked out both times?

“Now all of a sudden, you’re going to change? And our talent level is less than it was two years ago (when the Cowboys went into the playoffs with an NFC-best 13-3 record only to lose to the Giants). How much better can we be?”